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I have to tell ya, it’s just plain weird that people south of us are getting so much snow, while we have barely any. It just doesn’t feel natural!

Well, we’re not snowed in (I wish! I could use 3 days inside to clean my house!) but I’m still dreaming of spring. Luckily, it’s not all that far away. We started the garden in late March or early April last year. And next week is the garden sign up class for returning gardens at Capital District Community Gardens. Can’t wait! Secretly, I’m hoping we are able to get a double plot this year because we’re returning gardeners (it’ll depend on the number of gardeners I think). It’s so funny, because last year I was in awe of how big our garden plot was, and this year I’m hoping for double the size!

I’ve drafted a preliminary garden plan for this year, based on last year’s beds:

I’ve certainly learned a lot about what I want to grow from last year. For instance, I had THREE lettuce beds last year. We had so much freaking lettuce we didn’t know what to do with it. And you can’t exactly freeze lettuce. So this year, I’m cutting it down to one smaller part of a bed. I only have one spinach bed labeled on the plot, but I think I’ll add a second one (the one next to the “compost” pile, and I might even add more if we get a second plot. I LOVE spinach, and I can also make spinach salad if we have more than needed.

We plan on keeping the same amount of tomatoes as we did last year, which were 12 plants. I was sick of tomatoes by the end of the summer, but by now, I’m ready to grow them again! We’ve finished the canned tomato sauce and meatballs we made last year (only 3 quarts) but now that we know what we’re doing, we can hopefully make a lot more. We also might grow even more tomatoes if we get that second plot.

We grew a great amount of carrots last year and hopefully will do the same this year. We’ve learned we really need to thin them out though, as we got a lot of small ones because we let so many grow so close together.

Green beans got killed by insects last year but the few that we got were delicious. We only blanched and were able to freeze a small amount but it was great to have, and I want to be sure to do lots more this year.

We grew brussels sprouts last year and it was a total, total failure. And you know what? I don’t even like them that much. So this year, we’re going to grow some broccoli instead. This will be a totally new veggie in our garden, but I’m hoping to have some success.

Sugarsnap peas, on the other hand were a huge success, but we let a lot rot on the vine because they became ripe right in the middle of my surgery. I plan to get on them and blanch and freeze a lot of these as well for the winter.

We planted garlic last September and we’ll see how they do this year. We only planted 16 and we’ll see what makes it through the winter. We had 7 that we transplanted last spring from Terri’s plot, but they didn’t fare that well and were rather small. Maybe we’ll plant more in spring but I’m not sure they’ll be ready come fall, but 16 bulbs of garlic are definitely not enough to get us through the year.

And as I mentioned the other day, we’ve got to plant double the amount of onions. These are my favorite crop from last year. We got the seedlings free from Jenny last year, so I’m going to have to learn where to get them on my own.

And those are the major things I’m interested in growing this year. Sure we’ll still have strawberries and peppers and eggplant as well, but we’re most likely not going to have enough to last to get us through winter.

But what shall we do if we have double the space? Even planting more spinach, more tomatoes, more green beans and sugar snap peas, I think we’ll have more than enough room. Maybe a full fledged herb garden? Maybe flowers?